The Danish title for Wildland is Kød & Blod, which translates as “flesh and blood”. The original monicker gets to the core of debutante director Jeanette Nordahl’s atmospheric slice of Scandi noir, by not only exposing its visceral dark heart but also by laying bare the twisted family ties that lie at the centre of the story. On any streaming service, you would be able to find it under ‘Crime’, but that doesn’t do justice to its different colours, from its portrait of a disaffected teen to its exercise in tightly coiled dread.
Nordahl, a second unit director on Danish political drama Borgen, sets her unique tone of voice from the get-go, opening with a disconcerting shot of an upturned car followed by an expressionist montage detailing a trip to a hospital. It emerges that 17-year-old Ida (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) has survived the car crash that killed her drug-addicted mother. She subsequently goes to live with her aunt Bodil (Sidse Babett Knudsen), whom she hasn’t seen since she was an infant, out in the Danish suburbs, sharing the house with her cousins: alpha male Jonas (Fjel Joachim Fjelstrup), constantly AWOL David (Elliott Crosset Hove) and video-game junkie Mads (Besir Zeciri).
It’s a rare crime film that gives space to its women.
Bodil runs the house with a sunny disposition that belies a heart of steel. For, as close and sensuous as this clan is, the family business is an intimidating debt-collection racket, early scenes of their nefarious activities playing out on Ida’s face as she waits in the car while the brothers go to work in the background. Of course, one of the collections goes horribly wrong, and Ida is forced to choose between keeping quiet or telling the truth to her social worker.
In outline, it feels a bit Animal Kingdom-y, but Wildland has two points of distinction. The first is Nordahl’s off-beam filmmaking, somehow making Danish landscapes sinister, key moments tracked by Frederikke Hoffmeier’s throbbing atonal score. Secondly, it’s a rare crime film that gives space to its women, Kampp terrific as the timid teen, and the ever-excellent Knudsen, at once loving and ruthless, as the den mother. The result may be too muted for some, but Wildland ultimately delivers a taut, tense treat.